The present invention relates to a gas-liquid contact reaction apparatus, and particularly to the construction of a structured packing material for maintaining a desirable state of gas-liquid contact in an air separator and the construction of an air separator to which the packing material of the present invention is applied.
The constructions of prior art structured packing materials for gas-liquid contact are described in Japanese Published Patent No. SHO 40-28452, and Japanese Laid-open Patent Nos. SHO 54-16761 and HEI 5-103977. According to these prior art reference, the packing material is composed of thin plates each being formed of a wire-mesh having a plurality of holes or formed of a sheet-like metal, and the thin plate has waveform passages for liquid and gas. More specifically, the waveform passages are tilted relative to a column axis and the adjacent passages cross each other for accelerating the dispersion and mixture of liquid and gas in the radial direction. The wire-mesh as the thin plate is advantageous in terms of performance because it is self-lubricating and thus capable of enhancing the uniformity of liquid distribution, but it is inferior to the packing material made of the sheet-like metal in terms of cost. In this regard, the packing material made of the sheet-like metal is provided with horizontal micro-grooves on the surface for transversely dispersing liquid relative to a column axis and for increasing a gas-liquid contact area, or it is disposed with a plurality of projections on the surface in a staggered manner for increasing the dispersing effect of the flow of liquid and gas.
On the surface of an actual packing material, a plurality of holes are provided irrespective of the arrangement of micro-grooves and projections for dispersing liquid between the front and rear surfaces of a thin plate constituting the packing material.
The examples of air separators using the above-described structured packing materials have been disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Nos. HEI 1-244269, HEI 1-312382 and HEI 4-227461.
The above-described prior art packing materials, however, have been insufficient with respect to the structure for improving the uniformity of liquid distribution on the surface of a thin plate. This is because the prior art only has addressed the arrangement of the micro-grooves or projections for improving the liquid distribution, they have not addressed problems regarding the positional relationship between a plurality of the projections and holes provided on surface of the thin plate. In the prior art material, the holes having a diameter not strictly determined are provided at positions not strictly determined relative to the projections and micro-grooves. Consequently, the configurations of the projections and micro-grooves have been actually deformed upon perforation of the holes, or the projections have been partially or wholly broken.